A grotesque video shows the moment medics remove the body of a dead cockroach from a woman’s ear.
A hand is seen inserting tweezers into the ear of the woman and pulling out pieces of the insect before producing most of its body in one piece.
The woman had visited a volunteer fire station in Guatemala City after experiencing dizziness and headaches.
On closer inspection, one of the firefighters made the gruesome discovery that she had an entire dead cockroach lodged in her ear cavity.
A member of the volunteer firefighters posted the video online with the caption ‘You will sleep well tonight!’
A volunteer at the fire station used tweezers to remove the insect while another one filmed the grotesque procedure
The unnamed woman visited the fire station in the capital city of the Republic of Guatemala in Central America.
It is believed she went to the fire station because it was closer to her home than a medical centre.
She had reportedly been suffering intense headaches and dizzy spells.
When, on closer inspection, the firefighters made the stomach churning discovery, spokesman William Gonzalez filmed the bug being removed and posted it online.
He wrote the message: ‘You will sleep well tonight! A woman felt dizzy and had a migraine and decided to come to the Volunteer Fire Station. We found a cockroach in her ear.’
An entire cockroach was removed from the ear of the unnamed woman, who reportedly went to her local volunteer fire station because it is closer to her house than a medical centre
Cockroaches may look for food in human ears
According to National Geographic, cockroaches are one of the insects most keen to climb inside people’s ears.
One South African hospital removed 24 bugs from people’s ears in a two-year period, and ten of those were cockroaches.
Entomologist Coby Schal, of the North Carolina State University told the magazine: ‘It’s actually not an uncommon phenomenon to have a cockroach in the ear.
‘Roaches are searching for food everywhere, and earwax might be appealing to them.
‘A roach could go in to explore and then get stuck.’
US woman has cockroach parts in her ear for nine days
A similar case was reported earlier this month when Florida woman Katie Holley, 29, saw a cockroach’s legs sticking out of her ear.
She went straight to A&E, where doctors removed what they thought was the entire bug, but Ms Holley continued to experience ear pain and hearing loss.
She returned to a doctor nine days later and was then referred to an ear specialist who removed six more pieces of the cockroach’s body, which had been in her ear canal for more than a week.
Getting an object stuck in the ear can cause pain, infection and hearing loss.
People should not use tools to get things out of their own ears
It can be possible for someone to remove an object from their ear themselves, according to US non-profit healthcare organisation Mayo Clinic.
But tools or implements should not be inserted into the ear canal in case it pushes the object farther in.
Although fragments of the dead insect were removed first, most of its body was taken out intact
The website suggests tilting the head to encourage the object to fall out or, if it is an insect, pouring a small amount of mineral, olive or baby oil into the ear could float it out.
However, this should not be tried in children or if the eardrum might be perforated, which could cause pain or bleeding.
Cockroaches, however, are not the strangest animals medics have had to remove from a person’s body.
In 2017, a man in China went to the Nanchang University Hospital with severe abdominal pain.
After medics examined him, an x-ray revealed that he had an eel in his intestine which was causing intense pain.
When questioned by doctors about how it got there, the patient refused to answer.
However, medics concluded that the man had deliberately introduced the eel up his anus while drunk.